


When The Plague Comes

by LaBoiteDePandore



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Missing Scene, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 11:54:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20257687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaBoiteDePandore/pseuds/LaBoiteDePandore
Summary: When the plague comes, everyone has their own reason to stay in the dying city.





	When The Plague Comes

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Когда приходит чума](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20257570) by [LaBoiteDePandore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaBoiteDePandore/pseuds/LaBoiteDePandore). 

> Hey guys! This is my first translation, and English isn't my native language. So I hope it won't be very bad. If you find mistakes, please let me know!
> 
> Also, there's certain fem!MC named Selene.
> 
> Enjoy!

Sometimes it seems to her that bright azure sky glows red. That the grass, the trees and even the ground became scarlet with rich ruby shade. People on the street avoid each other fearfully, glare at the faces of strangers, looking for slightest signs of illness. Some houses bare their toothless windows and it’s seems the darkness there takes shape – a human or a demon – and it’s seems the darkness ready to take you, to strangle you, to paint your whites of the eyes with scarlet color of fresh blood.

There are not children’s cheerful laugh on the streets anymore, there are not any strolling musicians with their music; fortune tellers don’t drag the passersby to their booths, don’t spread the bones, rocks or colorful cards. Everyone knows the fortune, both their and the whole city. This fortune flowing through flooded districts with the red water; running along the road with the red beetles; standing at the exit of the city with gloomy wardens – there is no escape from the city, there is no entrance to – even if there will be a madman who would like to get up close to the dying Vesuvia.

She feels the breath of the Death everywhere, even in the shop: tart aroma of the dried herbs mixed with the sweetish smell of rot; this smell rises lump in the throat, lingers in the nostrils. She thinks that this smell has a taste – a taste of rotten fish that covers the coast and the docks. Neither the potpourri, nor water or spiced food can’t kill this taste, - to tell the truth, it seems to her more and more that the food has the same mawkish, nauseous and rotten taste.

She hates the palace and its dungeons, where the brightest minds of the city trying to find the cure. She hates the dark dungeons and their stale air filled with hopelessness and despair. She hates Valdemar’s unwinking gaze – they seem to be the only happy person in the city. Or, maybe, in whole world – she no longer believes there is countries and people anywhere who don’t know what the plague is.

Julian doesn’t sleep for ages and she sees his haggard cheeks, sharpened cheekbones and bruises under his eyes – even his usual grin faded and thin lips fold in narrow line with the suffering fracture. She brings him the new reports every day: the plague is progressing, no survivors, from the first signs to death passes less and less time, there’re only houseless and the doctors in beaked masks on the streets. Julian shuddering at first, looking to her with the hope, but in recent days there’re only despair and muted question in his eyes.

"Ten", - she says today.

"Thirty", - she will say tomorrow.

"A few hundreds", - that will be to the end of the week.

And then they will stop counting.

There is only hatred in her eyes when she watches over the wagons riding to the docks. Everyone knows: this is one-way trip. Next there will be the Lazaret, crematorium and seashore, where they will bury all that remains of you. The doctors look away from the heavily laden wagons: their wheels leave the heavy furrows on the mud, and the horses are exhausted. Sometimes there’re screaming and crying for help heard from the wagons – not everyone loaded in the hastily built carts are dead. These screams haunt her by night and she wakes up, surrounded by ghosts, and almost sees their ruby red eyes.

As Valdemar becomes happier, Julian more pale, and the other doctors – nameless – replacing rapidly, and you don’t need to ask where they disappear. The days merge into the infinite change of exhausted faces, groaning, the smells of rot; they coloring in the shades of red – the water, the sky, the ground, the eyes, the ulcers, cloaks and masks of the plague doctors; they fly by like a moment and last for ages and it seems to her that no one could break free from this vicious circle. She almost stops returning to the shop – there is not much time for this, and she spends all her time in the dungeon, and she stays overnight there, in the dark, gloomy dungeon where the blood doesn’t wash away from the floor already. And one day Julian returns from the palace with an unreadable expression on his face and says that the count gets down with plague.

"The eyes only", - Julian says and looks away. – "Nothing more".

But she knows: when your eyes turn red, time is running out and all you have is a several days at most.

The Count turns out to be resistant – two, three, ten days pass, and Julian says that he got worse, but he lives.

"Why _him_?" – Julian asks. Everyone think about it – in the palace, in the streets, in the dungeons; the doctors and all the dying patients whispering about it – the rumors spread across the city faster than the plague. The doctors die, the scientists and people around the streets die, but the Count, who is hatred by almost all the city, lives.

It seems that Julian stop sleeping and eating at all, he is locking himself at his office and she knows the Count demands cure from him. But there is no other person who wants to find a cure more than Julian himself and she knows that as well.

Soon the streets become more empty, more houses become abandoned and even ruffians don’t break the windows. One of these days she returns to the shop for changing her clothes and doesn’t even try to let fire: she learned to orient in the darkness long ago. Changed quickly, she hears the door’s slam and freezes, turned to the window. They haven’t seen each other… how long? A week? A month? She has already lost the count of these days.

"Selene?" – Asra’s voice sounds like he didn’t sleep for ages – just like Julian. – "It’s good you’re home".

"I’m leaving", - she says unemotionally, calmly and coldly.

"No", - Asra says and comes closely. – "We must leave the city, we can’t do anything here. There is no cure and the city is dying, Selene".

She straightens her back, squares the shoulders and closes her eyes.

"There is always a way out, Asra. Julian will find the cure, definitely. And _I_ will remain with him".

"You can’t really believe it. Come on, grab your stuff and let’s leave. I know how to get past the guardians", - Asra says impatiently. She hears him walks around the room putting his stuff and books in the traveling bag.

"I’m staying", - she repeats.

"No you don’t!" – Asra is almost screaming when he puts his hand onto her shoulder. She shakes his soft palm off the shoulder and repeats it again with the same cold in her voice: she’s not leaving.

"But why?" – even while she is face away from him, she almost sees the despair in his eyes and feels him runs his fingers through his fluffy hair. – "Why do you want to risk your life? I can’t allow you to do that!"

"I don’t need your approval", - she says. – "I won’t leave the city like a coward. I’ll remain with someone who do something. _Anything_".

"Do you consider me a coward?" – Asra asks. Pain, mistrust and emptiness – that’s what she hears in his voice.

"Yes", - she says. – "You aren’t worth Julian’s little finger".

"Julian, huh. Is that so?" - he says.

"Is it".

It seems her words destroying Asra completely. All she hears are ragged breath, heavy steps while he goes down the stairs and slow, unbearably loud creak of the door.

She exhales and leans her forehead to the cold dusty window. Nothing are reflected in the dark window but it seems to her that she sees reflection of her own eyes – green and unusually bright against the ruby red whites of the eyes.

She works in the dungeon another few days and feels eyes on her: interested and hungry – from Valdemar, sympathetic – from patients. She considers herself lucky – she hasn’t any ulcers, her body doesn’t cramp, all she has is overwhelming weakness. Good fortune smiles at her one more time: when she loses consciousness, Valdemar are busy with something very important and don’t see how one of those nameless doctors lifts her.

Through the fever and insufferable headache, she sees in flashes: a wagon’s wooden boards with dried blood drops; a piece of the scarlet sky; smooth surface of water; high walls of the Lazaret. 

When she, like the others, brought down to the cold floor, she can smell the rot and burning – suffocating, sweetish smell which soaked the crematorium walls. She wants to live madly, she wants to go to the journey with Asra, make tea for him, pulling his soft hair; in the same time, she wants it will be over – all that pain and fever, compared to which the flame won’t be felt.

It seems the thoughts about Asra completely crush her head – with the shame, guilt and a timid hope that the resentment was so strong that he won’t get back, won’t looking for her; that he will be in safety in his Nopal sanctuary or somewhere else. That he will be happy – sooner or later. That he will _live_.

When she sees scarlet flame strikes in front of her, when she smells the burning skin – her skin – all that she can is to hope that someday, in another world, she could tell him the most important thing.

\- I’m _so_ sorry.


End file.
